Tag: lessons

Thanks to ToolF8th Published on Mar 2, 2012
Apologies Of An Economic Hitman the movie by John Perkins

John Perkins was a prominent member of the top-secret team of “economic hit men”, who used fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, military coups and murder to create the global American empire after World War II. After a long internal struggle between his guilt and the fear of telling the truth, Perkins meets the daughter of an assassinated president and speaks out in front of an angry Latin-American audience.

Abstract:
This Article provides one of the first truly comprehensive accounts of the “Titles of Nobility Amendment.” The Titles of Nobility Amendment is one of only a handful of proposed amendments to the Constitution that were passed by Congress, but then not ratified by a sufficient number of states. The Amendment would have revoked the citizenship of any individual who accepted a “title of nobility or honor” or who accepted any “present, pension, office, or emolument” from any foreign state without congressional permission.

Despite its failure during the ratification process, the Amendment was printed in the 1815 version of the Statutes at Large as the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Amendment was widely believed to be part of the Constitution well into the late nineteenth century. In recent years, right-wing radicals have seized upon the Amendment, claiming that it was ratified and suppressed in a wide-ranging conspiracy and that it would bar lawyers from citizenship due to their use of the term “esquire.” Although a handful of recent articles have addressed these patently false claims, these articles have also misunderstood the Amendment, dismissing it as the product of xenophobia and petty politics.

This Article sets out to address these misconceptions by closely studying the Amendment’s historical context. In reality, the Amendment is an interesting hybrid of the rising fears during the decade preceding the War of 1812 that the United States would be recaptured and marginalized by European powers and of the long tradition of opposition to hereditary privilege in the United States. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the United States was increasingly buffeted and threatened by the major European powers, particularly by Britain and France. Under great foreign pressure, individuals on both sides of the political spectrum became increasingly suspicious of each other’s loyalties and both parties regularly accused the other of secret collusion and cooperation with foreign states. A response to this perceived foreign threat, the Amendment was intended to prevent the recruitment of American officials and citizens by foreign states with titles, such as the Legion of Honor, or other attractive presents and offices. Today these fears seem far-fetched, but at the time there was a very real worry that the American experiment would be rotted from the inside-out through secret conspiracy and subversion by European powers itching to reestablish their dominance in the Americas. Although long misunderstood, the Amendment is an interesting piece of history and is one of the most intriguing near-Amendments to our Constitution.

(This phrase is of note “without consent of Congress” from the actual transcript of the amendment and makes all the difference. It is often omitted when quoted by others).

THE HISTORY OF STUFF – Consumerism, Capitalism & Environment in America

Published on Aug 15, 2012 by Bright Enlightenment
The Story of Stuff – Consumerism, Capitalism, & Environment in America [HD] [Full Video] – Consumerism, Capitalism, Environmental Destruction, and what you can do to make the global economy more efficient and less wasteful!

For many in the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation, the Beatles were not just a fantastically popular band, but a symbolic representation of what was best about the era of their youth. The Beatles stood for Love, and Freedom, and Peace; and they stood against the extremes of the Cold War; that is, for common sense as opposed to either extreme Communism or mindless consumerism and capitalism. The Beatles were the polar opposite of Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon; they were the quintessential voice of the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement, and the Woodstock Generation (even though they had officially disbanded before Woodstock took place.)

However, even in their heyday, not everyone was equally impressed with the Beatles. Some were distressed by their rejection of Christianity, and their openly expressed alliance with Eastern religions. The Beatles’ work was also widely interpreted as encouraging the use of dangerous and addictive drugs, much to the dismay of the wiser & more socially prudent parents of the “flower children”.

Today, the debate rages on, as fundamentalist Christians (in particular) have increasingly noticed occult and even Luciferian messages in the Beatles’ music and imagery. While we see this primarily as a contrived false dialectic pitting fundamentalist Christianity (a bankrupt religious relic) against Satanism (another bankrupt fundamentalism), our purpose in writing this blog post is to look more deeply into the true purposes and the true alliances that the Beatles brought to the table.